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MetService

CityLink creates a bright digital forecast for the MetService

New Zealander's rely on weather forecasts everyday to help with decisions on how we live, work and play. The MetService is our most trusted provider of meteorological information and is massively dependent on ICT for all of its activities ranging from the super computing grunt needed to produce reliable and up to the minute forecasts, then keeping its customers who range from major media companies to individuals wanting to keep abreast of the weather as it changes. It's one of those businesses that gets taken for granted when everything works but they're in the firing line if it ever goes wrong!.

MetService has a huge range of products and services, and is a major publisher in its own right, producing material that is used in all media from Television graphics, complete page layouts for newspapers in New Zealand and overseas, live weather data feeds to many websites, faxes to fishing boats and now even text messages to cell phones.

All this means that the MetService is both a massive user of data in its own right and a serious data driven publishing business.

The MetServices Challenges

The MetService has many challenges to face in how it moves data around internally to get New Zealander's the timely and accurate forecasts that they rely on, but also that finished data "products" are pushed or streamed out to customers as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible.

This requires a range of advanced network services; fortunately the MetService has a long standing relationship with CityLink and is located on their core fibre network.

CityLink's Solution - "a sunny network forecast"

Because of the diverse range of features required by the MetService, CityLink provided a comprehensive suite of solutions to meet the needs of all their users both internally and externally.

CityLink provides MetService with:

Ethernet Services

We supply both a dedicated VLAN allowing private connectivity between the MetService office and off-site data centre, for back-ups; and for connecting MetService to their ISP and their MetServices corporate customers as well as public users of the MetServices own website www.metservice.co.nz

ExchangeNET

This provides the most direct connection between the MetService and its customers and users if their ISP's peer at one of CityLink's neutral internet peering exchanges

Harmony

Harmony provides live and on-demand content distribution of weather forecasts across a wide variety of media for use in everything web sites, newspapers and television graphics

WatchNET

Webcam located on top of Met Service building to capture local Wellington weather images with panning ability

The Benefits

The MetService have received some great customer feedback regarding their new services and flat rate access has simplified budgeting whilst generating big monthly savings for both them and their customers.

"CityLink is our first choice for communications solutions. Our customers now have quick access to customised information, which is important, as many of them have tight daily timeframes. CityLink connections have proved cost effective for us and our customers, translating into significant savings each month, and our webcam with its unique panning function has proven really popular, typically getting more than 3000 hits a day and receiving a lot of positive feedback. We use a range of CityLink services and they've consistently provided the best advice on what will meet our needs" says the MetService's Craig Delaney. If you have a seriously data driven business, give us a call and see if CityLink can help you improve the outlook of your network.

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"CityLink is our first choice for communications solutions. Our customers now have quick access to customised nformation, which is important, as many of them have tight daily timeframes."